


Storm-Grief

by EssayOfThoughts



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Mention of Canonical Character Death, Post-Episode: c01e115 The Chapter Closes, Spoilers for C1E115: The Chapter Closes, mention of other characters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-10
Updated: 2019-09-10
Packaged: 2020-10-13 23:02:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,098
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20590565
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EssayOfThoughts/pseuds/EssayOfThoughts
Summary: After everything, it's almost easy to be angry.





	Storm-Grief

**Author's Note:**

> Written basically immediately after watching ep115 because goddamnit, too many tears.

Keyleth isn’t much one for hatred but after Vax’s death, for a while, its strangely easy to hate a  _ lot. _ Not Vox Machina, even as they remind her of him every day. Not Vex, virtually identical but off just enough to hurt, not Percy, patient for all his quiet rage as he tries, stiltedly, to offer comfort.

But so much else. Everyone knows of them now, and everyone has stories. Everyone wants a tale, but Keyleth can’t speak of them without choking up.

Everyone speaks his name, over and over and over,  _ Vax’ildan, Vax’ildan, Vax’ildan. _

Never Vax. Simple and short and as much a nickname as any of the many he bestowed on them all.

Everyone speaks of his speed in battle, of his bravery rushing ahead.

No one speaks of how many times he almost died doing that, how many times they rushed in, hearts in their throats, _ hoping. _

A few speak of his magic boots, his blinkback belt, his daggers and his wings. Only a very few remember he had a snake belt he called Simon, because he nicknamed  _ everything. _

No one speaks of the time he spent angry with Percy. No one speaks of how he first met Kynan - not even Kynan. No one speaks of his  _ heart. _ They speak instead of a dashing rogue darting through shadows, Vestige in one hand and flametongue in the other and not one of them was there to see him teleporting around Scanlan’s Mansion in delighted, childlike glee when he first got Whisper.

They speak of his dedication to his sister, of the twins fighting back to back, of him becoming the Champion of the Raven Queen to save her. No one speaks of how he slept in doorways when he worried for one of them, or how scared he was at first.

They speak of them, sometimes, and she hates it because they get so much right. Confessing when bloodied and at death’s door, the stretch of uncertainty and quiet. Of him following her to the Ashari, leaping at lava for her sake for all his fear.

No one speaks of her burning hand on his back, the tattooed antlers on his arm. The Vox Machina crest on his skin, or  _ how _ he courted her, gentle and careful as though she’d run at any moment because she could have.

But she can’t tell them. She can’t tell anyone. She can’t tell them how his hair mussed in the morning, or his simple smile when helping at Zephrah. She can’t tell them how brash he could be, hard edges hiding a softness never truly hardened to the world’s cruelty. She can’t tell them any of these because they’re  _ hers _ , and they’re Vex’s and they’re all of Vox Machina’s.

_ He _ was theirs, until the Raven Queen took him, and she thinks, at last, that she may understand just a little Percy’s very specific hatred of gods.

But she can’t. Not for long. Never for long. Hatred and anger have never come as easily to her as they do to Percy. She can never hold it for long.

The pain eases a little. It still chokes her some days. She still feels a burst of burning, irrational anger when people speak of him but miss some essential part.

(How many people know he flipped the bird to Vecna? Even Scanlan kept that one thing for them and them alone.)

She could tell them. Maybe then it would hurt less. Maybe she could correct their misconceptions. Maybe, but she thinks Vax would like the simple remembrance, sometimes. Or, maybe, she wants to hold onto him a little longer, to be a little selfish. He was theirs, after all, Vox Machina’s, before he was theirs, the whole of the world’s. She doesn’t think Vex wants the tales shared yet, either, if only because how much Scanlan has carefully kept from his ballads and Kaylie’s, how much has been carefully omitted even from Tary’s tales.

One day, she decides, but not yet.

The ache eases. The pain fades a little, a fuzz at the edges to hide the hard spikes of it within. 

She can’t hate the Raven Queen, anymore. Without that push, that shove towards solemnity, that force of fate making him see, truly, the pressures she felt - that they all felt - the realisation of every possible consequence, without that on his part, without the risk of him taken away at any moment, there were some fears she may never have faced.

Percy still hates the Queen, though. She suspects she’ll never fully understand why. He says nothing, though, as she courts ravens at the Sun Tree, at Greyskull, at Emon. Vex smiles to see the feathers that start to gather in her wake. 

Sometimes, Vex and she, they sit with the birds and speak with them.

None of them are Vax, but they  _ remind _ them of him in a way no ballad can match. They’re snarky, smart little shits, and clever, and kind by turns. They nickname, in their caws.

It’s a reminder, and it’s a reminder they choose when they go to sit with them, to offer them dried jerky and convince them to extend their company for an hour or maybe two. It hurts, at first, and then the hurt eases, and the hate fades.

She misses him. So does Vex. So does Percy, even if he’ll hide it in anger, and so will Grog and Pike and Scanlan and Tary. They always will. He was theirs, theirs in a way that none of the rest of the world will ever fully understand, and that they may never get to see, even as the grief softens to something not quite so brutal, not quite so cutting. Percy lets them call him Freddie, when once it was only ever Vax. Vex leans into her side just as they both used to lean against Vax for comfort. Grog starts pranking them all, and it’s terrible and terrifying and it makes them laugh and then cry, because  _ if only Vax could see. _

The world doesn’t know Vax, only an image of him, an idea. Maybe, one day they’ll share the truth, Keyleth thinks. At the least, maybe she will, some hundred and a half years into the future when the ache eases to something fully bearable and the others aren’t there to object or make her reconsider.

Maybe. But until then, there is grief and there are ravens, and there are flashes of anger at the unfairness of the world. And, more and more, there is peace, even if it’s also sad.

**Author's Note:**

> Please leave comments!


End file.
